In fact, I hadn't received any mail at
all, after another exhausting day of
stalking the mailman. When I told Dor-
othy this, I added, "Or do you think
Lorraine stole my letter?"
"Yeah, probably," Dorothy said.
"No, really," I said.
"No," Dorothy said. "I bet it's there
right now. Should we skip dinner and
go see?"
Even though I'd left my apartment
fifteen minutes before, I considered it.
Then I said, "I've wasted this entire week
waiting, and I'm sure I didn't get a Peas-
lee, anyway. But if I don't check I can
pretend I got one until after the party
tonight. Like Schrödinger's cat."
"Ha," Dorothy said, then her features
twisted, her eyes filled, and she said, "I
don't mind teaching Comp next year,
but the past few weeks have just been
such a mindfuck. It's like a referendum
on our destinies." I adored Dorothy, and
her eyes filled with tears in my presence
several times a day, and probably sev-
eral times out of it, too. A lot of the peo-
ple in our program were nakedly emo-
tional in a way that, in childhood, I had
so successfully trained myself not to be
that I almost really wasn't. Before en-
tering grad school, I had never felt nor-
mal, but here I was competent and well
adjusted to a boring degree. I always
showed up for class. I met deadlines. I
made eye contact. Of course I was chron-
ically sad, and of course various phobias
lay dormant inside me, but none of that
was currently dictating my behavior. I
also didn't possess a certain kind of feral
charisma or mystery, and I didn't know,
though I wondered a lot, if charisma
correlated with talent. That's why Dor-
othy was right, that funding did feel like
a referendum.
In the auditorium, Dorothy and I
found seats toward the front, next to Je
and Bhadveer, whom we referred to, un-
beknownst to them, as our fake boy-
friends. Je was tall and plump, and Bhad-
veer was medium height and skinny, and
the four of us were all single and hung
out often. In lieu of a greeting, Je said,
"I'm not going to ask what funding you
guys got, and I don't want you to ask me,
and, if it's something you feel compelled
to discuss, go sit somewhere else." Dor-
othy had entered the row before me and
she glanced back and raised her eyebrows,
and I mouthed, "Rhetoric?" and she nod-
ded. This was the worst funding, besides
none, which a handful of students did in
fact receive. Or maybe Rhetoric was even
worse than nothing, because, if you got
nothing, you could find another job, but
with Rhetoric you had to teach five days
a week for sixty-four hundred dollars a
year. Aloud, Dorothy and I said, "Sure,"
and, "No, that's cool."
The auditorium filled, which meant
that about five hundred people turned
out to hear the man with the cult fol-
lowing, who was a graduate of the pro-
gram. He was wearing an untucked shirt,
baggy jeans, and beat-up hiking boots,
and halfway through his reading, when
he stumbled over a line he had written
a decade earlier, he said, "Fuck, man, I
need a drink," and about seven minutes
after that a guy from my program passed
a six-pack of beer up onto the stage, and
the man yanked o a can, popped it
open, and guzzled. He said, "That's the
stu ," and the audience applauded en-
thusiastically. I found the man brilliant
and wrote down three of his insights,
but the beer bit made me uncomfort-
able in ways it would take between two
days and twelve years to pinpoint.
After the talk, in the building's
crowded lobby, I was standing with Je
when I spotted Lorraine about twenty
feet away. "Eek," I said. "Can I hide be-
hind you? I see my weirdo neighbor."
"The smoker?" Je asked.
"Yeah, it's that woman in the black
leather trenchcoat."
"The smoker is Lorraine? She tutors
with me at the Writing Center. She's
kind of bonkers."
"Exactly."
"You know about her daughter, right?"
"Should I?"
"She had a teen-age daughter who
died of anorexia. And not even that long
ago---like two years?"
"Jesus," I said. "Maybe I am a fuck-
ing bitch."
"After that, I'd smoke, too."
"I already said I feel bad."There was
a pause---the lobby was still crowded
and buzzing---and I said, "Obviously,
that's a horrible tragedy. But aren't
her daughter's death and her blowing
"And now a request from the audience."